Temporary and interactive installations as a play tool in the urban space

Architectural space is primarily made up of a space that is experienced, one that requires acting by a performing body that experiences this surrounding while gaining spatial awareness through the vehicle of created events. It is the unique surroundings of the body that thus encourage or discourage it to move within the space. In other words, every object around the body evidences certain clues relative to the potential body movements within this built environment. Despite the fact that the space has a discrete measurable physical existence, it is actually the activities or events that occur within that particular space that impart meaning to the space. The city is a living microcosm that contains many potent moments and a living, growing, developing, sometimes shrinking, obsolete, ineffective, living organism. The city is an area of activity that adds a new layer to its spatial existence with each individual communicating and interacting with him. Each user of the city spatially urbanizes itself in the context of its interaction with its own being and its surroundings, and creates its own urban space. This formed urban space is as social as it is individual; Because the person who makes this living organism that we call the city, exists with social relations. The spaces that individuals experience in the direction of their potentials are intertwined, creating a superstructure with bins and urban spaces all around. Of course, individuals do not have the same quality of interaction as every other city. While in a more qualified and productive interaction with some parts of the urban city, it is in a more superficial communication with some points. These communications and interactions are not always of the same quality and continuity, even for the same space. For this reason, some urban spaces lose their effectiveness locally, or are confined to daily use practices. While showing that this city is constantly changing and transforming, on the other hand, it is also a sign that the city's spaces are active with the use of individuals and that they have begun to live. Because when the urban space is not in use, it defines only one space. Architects-planners, when designing the city, create areas that allow for urbanization through a number of predictions and analyzes. However, in time, the urban space is faced with different usage practices and can no longer be used as an old one. Because, the city is not just a built-up landscape; The city is a living organism shaped by the daily routines, habits, experiences and social activities of the city. For this reason, it is in constant change and transformation. So, it can be said that the instant encounters / situations / interactions that occur in the city scale create the conditions that will enable the events that enable this restructuring to come to an end. Planned or unplanned situations / actions to be made in the urban space can create conditions to create 'events'. These situations / actions take place unexpectedly outside the predetermined program of that space. Festivals, concerts, biennials, performances of street artists, street exhibitions, races, etc. can be considered as situations / actions that occur temporally, at certain times, in the urban space and create 'events' in the urban space. This thesis focuses on the temporary areas of activity in which the urban space is established, in the context of all these potential events. These temporary areas of activity can be considered as performance and playgrounds, designed in the direction of the city's new use practices, allowing instant production. It is possible to think of these areas as the areas of communication that will bring the reconstruction of the city to the agenda. These fields invite the urbanites to experience this area and the moment by playing a game in the middle of the city. On the othe hand, urban spaces can exist with the use of the body. It means, because public space finds meaning through actions and events that occur or have occurred in that particular space, the movement of the body determines the fiction of the public spaces. The body is the creator and operator of these events and actions. This body, which is always in interaction and communication in the urban context, can be conceptualized as performative body. Public space is the stage of world where always opens to new interactions, events and in this way, transformation. This stage is reconfigured with every new intervention and it is decomposed and reconfigured again. Public space is not only a place to come and go for it is also a terminator space with potentials for various physical, temporal matches and even some conflicts. The different experiences that occur in the same place simultaneously through the contribution of different bodies in different times result in the creation of a common ground in public space. Thus, the different consumptions of space by different bodies refer to an interpenetrated growing space. When the city is transformed into a new field of activity with each individual, some tools and mediators make the potential moments of this transformation more visible. These tools create inviting and productive areas of activity by playing with the city's body-space encounters. Urban is a field of research for the makers (designers, architects, artists) of the vehicles that provide the means of exploiting these areas of activity as much as the city is an activity area for the urban people. The creators (designers, architects, artists) that make Kentlin the place where these fields of activity are made are the founders of this game. In this context, this study regards temporary and interactive settlements as design tools with many potentials to stimulate urban life. These tools play an active role in the re-use of idle urban spaces or in the use of urban spaces again in different ways, which is encapsulated in the practice of daily use, and in doing so transforms the urban space into a 'playground' area. This study sees the interactive and temporary installations realized in the urban space as design tools that reconstruct the urban space while transforming city into a playground. It also mentions that these installations work as a playmaker on the urban scale, encouraging and inviting the body. These temporary art and space installations that are active with the body's internal inclusions allow dynamically changing structures in the public arena. These spatial situations also reveal the body's power not only as a space maker, but also as part of a space organization. In the first part of the study, the main aims and research topics of the thesis were presented and it was determined how and with which methods the answers would be found. In the second chapter "City as a Playground" main topics, "Play Concept", " Play Concept in the Urban Space", " Instantly Produced Urban Space" and "Temporary and Interactive Installations as a play tool in Urban Space" were examined and researched. First of all, a conceptual literature search was conducted on the concept of play, which will guide the thesis in general. It has been emphasized that the play is an act of nature that continues to do dogmatically in nature, since infancy. In the second sub-section of the chapter, Play Concept in the Urban Space, the game's urban presence and the publicness it has created have been examined. In the section of Instantly Produced Urban Space, how the city was constantly renewed and stratified by instant interventions was researched and supported by literature reviews. It has been emphasized that the city can constantly come up with new meanings with bodily interventions and it can be dynamic in this way. In the Temporary and Interactive Settlements Division as a game medium for urban dwellings, the urban mall focuses on the interactions established with the urban dwellers and how they operate as a game medium. In the third part of the thesis, the concept of "Performative Body" was examined. The concept of "Homo Ludens", which Huizinga earned to human culture was dealt with in the formative state of the body. The concept of "Homo Ludens" has been dealt with in terms of the performative nature of the body, and the body in communication has been conceptualized as the "performative body" throughout the thesis. In the forth chapter, the concept of game was deciphered in three main themes: actors, spaces and rules. Than, selected installation examples that invited urban participation were examined and deciphered through the game creation potentials in the city according to these three themes. In the conclusion section of the thesis, as a result of the literature reviews and the decipherments made on the examples, conclusions have been made about how the spatial and temporal boundaries, rules and invitations should be constructed in order for these games to interact with the environment and start to transform the urban space. In the scope of this thesis, the main idea is that by creating new life scenarios these event generators have important potentials in terms of re-evaluating and re-activating abandoned parts of the city and the city place that is trapped in daily use practices. This thesis suggests that temporary and interactive installations that are activated by the involvement of the body allow the production of alternative, playful, eventful, and communicative spaces in the urban context. This idea primarily derives from the fact that events play important roles in the re-utilization of neglected urban spaces. Body and designed space can be considered as main actors of this re-creation process. Temporary and interactive installations arranged in an urban context lead to the communication of people/bodies with their built environments. Keywords: Play, Urban Spaces, City as a Playground, Playground, Performative Body, Performative Space, Event, Installation, Temporaray and Interactive Installation